'Net Features : webmasterhttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/tags/webmaster/default.aspxTags: webmasterenCommunityServer 2008 SP2 (Build: 31104.93)Google Data Highlighter Adds Supports for Six Data Typeshttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/05/28/google-data-highlighter-adds-supports-for-six-data-types.aspxTue, 28 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:25244Pete Prestipino0http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=25244http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/05/28/google-data-highlighter-adds-supports-for-six-data-types.aspx#comments<p><strong>The rich snippet markup tool added by Google was well received when it was launched back in December 2012, but it was limited to event-type data.</strong>
<br /><br />
This month Google added six new data types including those for articles, movies, TV episodes, local business, software applications and, finally, products. Strangely, the link to the product data type listed in Google Webmaster Help has been broken since the addition, leading many to believe that Google is working on something unique for Internet retailers which it will release in the near future (more on that as it develops).
<br /><br />
Google&#39;s Data Highlighter tool is essentially a WYSIWIG editor for structured markup, enabling authorized site owners to add rich snippets to Web pages - which previously had to be hand coded and added to pages on an individual basis.
<br /><br />
To tell Data Highlighter which of the pages on a site contain data (data that can be used for rich snippets which appear on the search results), webmasters must create one or more page sets - a collection of pages on a site that display data consistently (possibly generated from the same template) and are organized so that URLs follow a simple pattern. The Data Highlighter will only teach Google about pages that are in a page set.
<br /><br />
Also keep in mind that the Data Highlighter can only access pages that have been crawled by Google recently. If Google has not or can not crawl pages, such as those behind sign-in forms, the Data Highlighter can&#39;t be used for those pages.
<br /><br />
The data highlighter tool is available within Google Webmaster tools.</p>
<p><img height="247" width="600" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/datahighlighter.png" alt="" /></p>
<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=25244" width="1" height="1">googleseowebmasterwmfeaturewm-searchmarketingDon't Ignore Manual Penalties from Googlehttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/07/27/don-t-ignore-manual-penalties-from-google.aspxFri, 27 Jul 2012 09:15:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:20370Michael Garrity1http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=20370http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/07/27/don-t-ignore-manual-penalties-from-google.aspx#comments<hr />
<p><b>Have you ever been
hit with a manual penalty by Google? That is when publishers are notified by the search engine for breaking one or more of its quality guidelines. If so, how did
you deal with it? </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The tricky thing with these manual penalties is that they
can show up at anytime, since they&rsquo;re not subject to the limited visibility of
the algorithm and can be levied by a Google employee at basically any time if
they find something questionable on your site. Of course, everyone wants to
avoid receiving one of these penalties, because they also come with an
immediate drop in search rankings.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Interestingly, however, many publishers often decide to just
ignore these warnings and wait for the penalty to expire, perhaps in hopes of
making their way back up the SERPs naturally once their red flag has been
removed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Google&rsquo;s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller recently came
out to &ldquo;strongly suggest&rdquo; (in other words, listen up!) that publishers don&rsquo;t
just ignore their manual penalties and wait for them to expire. Rather, he
suggests the incredibly novel proposition that webmasters figure out a way to
resolve the issue and then submit a reconsideration request to Google once the
problem is fixed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This makes sense, primarily for two reasons: 1. Penalties
usually take six months or more to expire, and being dropped in the SERPs for
that long can be extremely harmful to an online business, and 2. penalties can
simply be applied to a publisher again once the original has expired.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thus, it would be in your best interest to simply address
Google&rsquo;s concern and correct it to the best of your ability, rather than just
ignore it and hope that it goes away.</p>
<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=20370" width="1" height="1">googlesearchwebmasterpenguinwm-searchmarketingjohn muellergoogle penaltyRich Snippet Updates Support HTML Testinghttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/04/18/rich-snippet-updates-support-html-testing.aspxWed, 18 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:19536Michael Garrity0http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=19536http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/04/18/rich-snippet-updates-support-html-testing.aspx#comments<hr />
<p><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/g-mini.gif" style="float:left;margin:10px;" height="75" width="75" alt="" /><b>Google
has blogged about two big updates to the types of rich snippets the search engine will be
crawling. The news is especially useful to online merchants, SEO professionals
and, well, pretty much anyone that runs a website.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rich snippets, of course, are microformats that can be added
into a Web page&rsquo;s code by including special tags to enhance search results with
more detailed data.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first major change has to do specifically with product
rich snippets. Up until now, these were only available as a limited set of
locales, meaning products could only be previewed by specific users (based on
their locations) viewing your site&rsquo;s results in Google Search. Now, however,
product rich snippets will be supported globally, meaning that users can preview
site information about products from basically anywhere in the world.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Take a look at global product rich snippets (from Google&#39;s blog):</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/product-snippet.png" style="vertical-align:middle;margin:10px;" height="92" width="528" alt="" /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the request of many webmasters, Google also announced
HTML input support for its rich snippets testing tool. This change will allow
users to test their HTML source without having to publish it on the Web. An
update like this is a pretty huge deal because webmasters can simply test a
selection of HTML code to make sure that it will appear as intended for users,
even while it&rsquo;s still a work in progress. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Here&#39;s what HTML input for the rich snippets testing tool looks like:</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/HTML-snippet.png" style="vertical-align:middle;margin:10px;" height="529" width="798" alt="" /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These changes will help webmasters and SEO professionals to
streamline the optimization process since they&rsquo;ll be able to test their rich
snippet coding before a page goes live, which alleviates a lot of the headaches
that can come with publishing defective code. It also aids online merchants by
helping them promote more detailed information about specific products to a
more global audience.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=19536" width="1" height="1">googleseosearchrich snippetswebmasterBing Webmaster Tools Update: Deeper Crawl Details and More http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2011/11/07/bing-webmaster-tools-new-crawl-data-and-more.aspxTue, 08 Nov 2011 01:20:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:18094Pete Prestipino0http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=18094http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2011/11/07/bing-webmaster-tools-new-crawl-data-and-more.aspx#comments<hr />
<p><img style="float:left;margin:15px;" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/bing-mini.gif" width="73" height="73" alt="" />Bing is rolling out a long list of new features and improvements for its <strong><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster">Webmaster Tools</a></strong> offering. The updates focus on providing webmasters with the ability to &quot;share more data&quot; with the search engine and that&#39;s exactly what it has done. As Bing closes in on 30 percent search market share, many of these features will become essential in the search marketers toolbox in 2012 and beyond.
<br /><br /><strong>
Crawl Detail Information</strong><br />
Bing is expanding its <i>Crawl Details</i> information, showing inbound links to a given URL regardless of the header response code. Previously, users of Bing&#39;s Webmaster Tools were limited to seeing only those inbound links which pointed to pages returning a 400 header response code (e.g. 404 - file not found). Now, anything listed under the 200, 400 and 500 codes will, by URL, display inbound links to the URL. Search marketers will also be able to see any URLs listed under the Robots.txt and Malware headings - which is important for a variety of reasons obviously including the influence on rankings. <br /><br /><strong>
URL Normalization Suggestions</strong><br />
Bing will also be placing URL normalization suggestions within Webmaster Tools accounts. These suggestions are disabled by default, but BWT users can add them selectively and are able to increase the number of query string parameters that can be normalized per site from 25 items to 50. The timing of this update could not be better as the holiday shopping season is fast approaching for ecommerce merchants/Internet retailers. While there are certainly instances when 50+ parameters are needed,&nbsp;those with &quot;parameter heavy&quot; URL structures should look into ways to solve any canonicalization issues which maybe negatively impacting rankings.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong><strong>DNS Verification</strong></strong><br />
In order to claim a website/domain in BWT, webmasters need to verify ownership. Nothing new there. Previous choices were either a code snippet that needed to be added to page headers or by uploading an XML file, but now, webmasters have a third option &ndash; placing a CNAME record in their DNS. While the merits and risks associated with adding an additional CNAME into the DNS are unknown, this may signifiy Microsoft&#39;s willingness to play a more involved role in the search marketer/search engine relationship. WM recommends using the XML verification method as it remains the least intrusive.&nbsp;<br /><br /><strong><strong>
adCenter Data</strong></strong><br />
The most important addition to Bing Webmaster Tools I believe may just be the integration of data from adCenter within webmaster tools accounts. When viewing traffic data and looking at which keywords drove traffic, webmasters will notice an average CPC column. The new feature also allows for a quick view of keywords and associated CPCs.</p>
<p>Bing Webmaster Tools is still playing catch up to its competition in Google Webmaster Tools, at least in terms of features, but these additions show it is inching ever closer to the search giant - just like its search market share.&nbsp;</p>
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